WHITEOUT

31. August 2018

Glaciers and alpine wilderness territories in the age of ecological paradigm shifts. A photography and video project.

Transient Area, photography 2018, various dimensions, Ed. 7+1

Since the invention of the medium, the photographic image of nature has played a decisive role in their perception and reception. For some time photography has also played an important role in visualizing the catastrophic effects of climate change. My interest in landscape perception as a political act is increasingly focused on wilderness areas that are progressively in a transitional state. During my hikes on glaciers, their outskirts and high-alpine territories, I am driven by the feeling that one can hardly experience nature and landscape today without at the same time becoming aware of its ecological problems.> Depicting landscape also means being a chronicler. Today, when we enter alpine glacier zones, the fact that they are melting and fading as a result of climate change, that is, constantly changing, is evident. I often wonder in which dimension these indisputable facts of contemporary ecological catastrophes in the Alps will influence their (stylistic) approaches, which are still shaped by German romanticism … My views on the modulations and fragmentation of Alpine zones are guided by a strong skepticism towards a romantic and commercialized ideology, which is still being transported by the media in terms of contemporary representation of nature. On the one hand, I also understand the suppression (of course also taking place) of critical reporting (especially of extreme sports and fun sports) and have a certain mistrust of a photograph that thinks that it has to be didactic, in the hope, perhaps still to influence the course of the story. I am much more convinced that a work of art will have the makings of a masterpiece if it can create a kind of chill – or develop a melancholy power using aesthetic means that, while still figuratively rooted in the tradition of romantic perception, but at the same time has an eerie component … (Michael Goldgruber / Viktor Bucher, 2019)